When the whole NMP project began robert gave us all the task of writing up a proposal for our projects, So that he had a little understanding of what all our ideas were. It was inevitable that our ideas would change from time to time, and yes that was the story with mine. 

So here’s my initial plan: 

Description:
To produce works of art (illustrations, prints) which centre on the notion of an A-Z in fashion (i.e. A is for…(name a fashion item)). I will research into various fashion aspects (shoes, clothes, designers, and fashion icons) and from there select one to work with towards a major final piece(s). 

I would like to work with an ‘A-Z of shoes’ – but will need to research into shoe designers, shoe types and descriptions of shoes to get a larger insight into this aspect. 

Format:
I will be working towards producing the A-Z of shoes as a set of postcards. I will be incorporating my own illustrations as well as producing my own complete

A-Z ‘fashion’ style typeface. With my A-Z typeface I will be turning them into silk scree prints onto tote bags (so there will be 26 bags in total, each one with a letter of the alphabet). 
Towards the final few weeks I may transfer my designs on to t-shirts, cards and wrapping paper so that I get a wider scope into where I can apply my illustrations. 

Schedule:
Over the first few weeks of the NMP I am working to produce experimental imagery from some standard drawings of shoes and lettering that I will draw up. 

I am mainly looking into experimenting with these various print processes:

·      Cyanotype

·      Silk Screen Printing

·      Mono Printing

As well as these techniques I am also aiming to try out new techniques such as embossing and sewing to further my experimentation. 
Towards the Easter holidays I am aiming to have my imagery more a less up to scratch and have all my experimental work complete. Thus allowing me to spend the holidays in putting together the final art works – so putting together my illustrations onto postcards, box making and also getting a few sample prints done so I can see what kind of final finish I want on the postcards. 
During the final few weeks before hand in I will make any final amendments to my illustrations, make sure they are all precise and printable, and I will also be making mock up samples to see what I can change, in order to make the final pieces to the best of my ability. 

All of my research and any additional work I will be doing is going to be put onto my tumblr blog www.tumblr.com/tasneemfulatprocon3.
I have also started my own fashion related blog www.tadfashion.blogspot.com, where I have been placing a ‘look’ each day to get me into the swing of writing and blogging, as well as bettering my insights into fashion. 
As well as the above I am also on a work placement for a student website company called UNIsorted – writing fashion related articles for them, as well as a few articles based on Manchester and its students/attractions. 

My title was always going to be based upon shoes, but my mind was all over the place with ideas a few months back, so it was a case if trial and error for the most part. It dawned in me that creating an A-Z has been done in the past, and like always i wanted to do something new and a bit different. Yet still stick to the whole fashion scene. 
A few months into the project and it dawned on me, i needed to take a step back and really think about what kind of an outcome i wanted from the whole NMP. I’ve always wanted to be a fashion illustrator, and guessed this would be the perfect time and place to begin. 

My brief then altered to:
“To produce a series of shoe illustrations (shoe forms i.e. brogues, stiletto’s, wedges), using hand crafted techniques. Alongside each illustration of the shoe provide a short description with a historical background. The final outcomes will be hand produced with the possibility of illustrations being scanned in to produce smaller prints (which can then be used as mini prints and postcards)” 

The first couple of months i began by doing a tonne of printing experiments. Which included mono printing, cyanotype and screen printing. I enjoyed all three technIques as they all gave a completely different finish to my illustrations. At this point i was leering towards producing my final illustrations as mono prints, as when scanned in they still retained the hand drawn finish: 

 

But once i scanned them in and started to render them so when printed they’d give a clear finish i wasn’t pleased with how they were looking. I really didn’t want my illustrations looking too photoshopped. As the whole hand drawn element was important. 
It wasn’t until around 3weeks back that i was sat in the illustration studio playing around with watercolour techniques that i finally hit the jackpot for my final prints.
I used a lightbox and placed my line drawing of the shoe and then on top a watercolour sheet of paper which i then watered down in the shape of the shoe drawing. I then added the watercolours in the shoe shape which resulted in numerous amounts of textured tissues and some pretty great final shoe illustrations: 

 

All in all i wouldn’t change any aspect of my NMP, if i had more time i would have loved to have produced even more shoe illustrations, as the 20 shoes i did aren’t the only shoe types out there. I guess this calls for a project to carry on at home, but for now i think me and shoes need to take a bit of a break, and it’s time to start a new illustration venture. I’m hoping to build up my illustration portfolio in the next few months so that i can give myself a clear view into the world of work. 
I am also going to develop my NMP shoe illustrations as postcards, wallpaper, tote bags for the final degree show, so the university print room will be my studio of work for a few days. 

As it’s the final hand in, in around 6 hours time, this blog will be at a stand still, nevertheless as i’ve enjoyed blogging so much this year i’ve decided to create a blog full of my illustration, love for fashion and anything else that catches my eye: http://tasneemf.tumblr.com
 

Finished all my work which is an amazing feeling! Got a few bits and bobs to annotate this evening but other than that it’s all done and dusted. Even though the whole NMP is finished as of tomorrow i still want to carry on with my shoe illustrations, develop them into postcards, greeting cards, wallpaper, git wrap etc which i could possibly sell. 
I also want to delve further into illustrating more fashion clothing, which i feel i going to be a big step in my freelancing career i am hoping to set up this summer. I definitely need to have a really good online presence which shows off my illustrations at my very best. So re-tweaking my website fully this week, as well as starting up a new blog on tumblr, along with starting a whole new fashion blog as the one i had started (tadfashion.blogspot.com) just isn’t doing it for me anymore. 

The next few weeks are going to be really hectic though, with the end of year degree show to organise, i can’t wait to get involved. 
In that time i also need to think about how i’ll be displaying my work for the show - i know i want to keep it simple as well as adding in my hand sewn elements into it. But for now i think i’ll take a small step back and get all my self promo finished by next week. (business cards, labels, tags, maybe some postcards, website, online portfolio). I’ve also managed to get myself onto twitter - @tasneemfulat
I am also considering finding possible agencies and people i’d like to work for, and send them invites to the show, as this would be a great opportunity for them to see my work in person (that’s if they turn up!). 

 

With my project all coming together and having a few days to spare i decided to frame up one of my shoe illustrations/stories. I decided to go for the flip flop as i felt placing it in the frame would create a bit more of an impact than some of my other illustrations. Took yet another trip down to The Range over the weekend and picked up these amazing black frames. Just what i was looking for. So that they coincide with my illustrations. 

I used my tie dyed fabric to make up the main part of the flip flop, along with sewing it all together with a needle and thread. I also attached lace for the straps and added a few beads to create a hand crafted look to the overall hand sewn illutration. 

I have got two smaller frames to add on either side of this one, one will contain the story of the flip flops and the other a dictionary description of them. After pondering the ways in which i could transfer text onto my fabric, i decided to go for cyanotype. They turned out great, robert has also suggested i print all my stories this way, as they are different and better than just having a printed pice of card to read. I’m hoping to have some free time on Thursday to get them done, but will have to see how i’m getting on with all the final bits and pieces of the NMP. 

 

Tomorrows plan is to stitch into parts of the text and the title, so that it matches my hand sewn flip flops. The turquoise colour of the cyanotype has turned out pretty good, as i thought the shade would be slightly  darker like it is when used on paper. 

Been going through writing up the stories to go along side my illustrations. At the very beginning of this project i was hoping to find stories from people about their own shoes, but unfortunately i just didn’t get enough stories along with people not describing their shoes specifically for me. But some of the ones i did get were quite great, so i shall post them up as part of my research once i have them collated in one place. 
Instead i decided to opt for shoes and the historic stories behind them, so as to keep with the whole them of ‘every shoe tells a story’. 

In order to make my shoe stories sound interesting, i decided to go with describing the shoe and then adding a mini historic story underneath. 
The overall illustrations will look like this: (i’m thinking of getting them printed A5 size so that they can be used as postcards as well as small prints) 

With the whole design aspect of my prints, i really wanted to keep it pretty much simple, so as not to over complicate the text, and i really wanted to steer away from over doing the whole photoshopping on my scanned in illustrations. Keeping them as much hand drawn and realistic was my aim.

Later on this week i’ve got the photography studio booked for around 3hours, so i’m hoping to collate all my shoes and take them to photograph. So as to create a final photo montage of my shoes and my stories behind them. 

On a final note here’s the story of the Boat Shoe:

Been working through getting my titles done for each story - decided to go with the shoe illustration as a replacement of certain letters. Really like how they’ve turned out, and the alphabetical prints i did have created that little bit of hand crafted-ness to my overall work.